For Your Information

There's Been Two Attempts At Creating A Female Turtle In TMNT

There might've been more drafts, but two female Turtles have made it to TV and Comics, to at the dismay of several thousand fans and to the approval of several thousand fans. To me, I'm impartial. However this is the history of the three times a female turtle made it to the mediums. Let's start with a non-turtle female love interest.

Instead of the naming scheme of artist and also not being a turle but actually a salamaner her name was Mona Lisa, a character created to be a love interest of Raphael in the original 1987 show as a one-off. Spoiler of the episode "She was a college student who majored in physics. One day, while on a fishing trip with some friends, a pirate named Captain Filch attacked their boat. Though her friends were able to escape, Filch kidnapped Mona Lisa and tried to convince her to help him with his experiments on his submarine, so he could take over the world. Mona Lisa played along, and one night, she tried to destroy his nuclear reactor and was mutated in the process. After this, she vowed to stop Filch." - 2012, she was changed to being an alien from Salamandria and became a reoccuring creator among the series, where she was much more liked. Which in the IDW comics Mona Lisa was back to being a human who became a salamander, however there isn't much backstory that I could find since I don't read the comics nor does any wiki says anything.

The original fitfth TMNT female Turtle was named April O'neil? Yeah, in the Archie comics - The Winter 1994 Archie Special - April mutated into a turtle. This made April become the first official female turtle introduced to the series, three years before Venus de Milo's debut. She got turned into a turtle while trying to find an antimutagen for Spliter, for his birthday, to become human again. SInce the comics were based around the original 1987 cartoon until it became its own thing. While as a Mutant Turtle she dawned a white bandana.

Okay, in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Next Mutation the fifth TMNT female turle was named Venus de Milo - nicknamed Venus - original real name, Mei Pieh Chi, who showed up in Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation in 1997. Which if you ask me, her naming is confusing, and was out of the show almost as quickly as she entered. It could have been complications behind the scenes, possible confusion of her light blue bandana looking like Leonardo's (though his bandana was darker), or maybe she was canned because they didn't know what to do with her. Unless I'm wrong and there's an actual reason, though according to Peter Laird called the idea of a fifth turtle "creatively bankrupt" and doesn't like her mentioned. I don't think he's opposed to a female character mutant turtle, just another character in the TMNT team, even though there was a concept idea of a possible fifth turtle named Kirby, after Jack Kirby.

Now to the most controversial, Jennika. Jennika was originally human even being a love interest with Casey Jones at a time before she mutated into a turtle. I guess a late spoiler alert is issued, but I'm not going into the full details besides she got a blood infusion similar to She-Hulk/Hulk situation of someone nearly dying and being given blood to live. She became a mutated Turtle, being a turtle she has a yellow bandana. Why she is controversial is more spoiler territory and I'll just say she's Bisexual. So not only is she another female Turtle but she's also LGBTQ+ which got under the skin of many fans. I'm not gonna say bigoted, or that they're not true fans - to me that's just gate keeping. It's just people disliking change about hearing another female turtle - which is apperently blaspheme - and then she is bisexual. Which the only arguement I do agree with is, that it's pretty stereotypical of a nonfeminine famale character canonically being not straight. But I also agree that it'd also be stereotypical for her or one of the members of TMNT fell in love.